The use of radioactive material may result in the contamination of reactors, fuel and isotope processing facilities, laboratories, glove boxes, isolators, and other rooms. Decontamination efforts of these rooms benefit from knowledge of where in the room radioactive contamination is located. A worker may concentrate his or her decontamination efforts on portions of the room that are actually contaminated while avoiding those areas that are already clean thus saving time, effort, money and exposure to radiation. Identification of radioactive contamination in a room may be accomplished through the use of a collimator that includes a detector made of a radiosensitive detector material that is in the shape of a sphere. The detector is located within a collimator shield that has a series of through apertures. The collimator may be placed within a room that is contaminated with radioactive material for a time sufficient to allow portions of the detector to become opaque via exposure to the radiation contamination.
The apertures of the collimator shield function to direct or channel the radiation into the spherical detector so that opaque lines or streaks are formed. The degree of opaqueness and the direction of the lines yield information on the intensity of the radiation and its direction. The collimator shield functions to block out radiation either completely or partially so that portions of the detector are not turned opaque to better allow this determination.
The collimator is a passive device and thus cannot determine its position or orientation within the room. The user may remove the detector and examine same in order to determine radiation intensity and direction in much the same way that a medical professional will examine an X-ray. It may be the case that the sources of radiation that can be transferred through an aperture of the collimator shield are at too remote an angle to the aperture. Such radiation may cause opaque portions to be formed in association with the aperture that would be confusing or tend to be interpreted as noise thus hindering accurate identification of radiation intensity and location. Although techniques are available for ascertaining the location and intensity of radiation contamination within a room, such techniques are subjective in nature, costly, not efficient, limited in application, not automatic, and inaccurate. As such, there remains room for variation and improvement in the art.
Repeat use of reference characters in the present specification and drawings is intended to represent the same or analogous features or elements of the invention.